One morning, in 2011, Monique Jeffrey, of Rose Bay, Australia, was at home, in her bed, checking her emails. She sneezed and her head suddenly jolted forward, collapsing the C1 and C2 vertebrae in her neck. She had broken her neck in what experts called a “freak accident”, but the chances of something like this happening twice to the same person were apparently “slim to none”. And yet, last month, Monique suffered the same ordeal, this time while laughing with some colleagues at work.

“I texted Sam (her husband) just saying ‘help!’ and he called me and I answered on speaker phone, because I couldn’t put the phone to my ear,” Monique recalls about the bizarre accident she suffered over five years ago. “He came home and called an ambulance. It was pretty scary and it was such a strange sensation. I was in so much pain after just one little sneeze.”